Naughty or nice, the big man comes tonight. With only one day to Christmas, it might be a little too late to get on Santa's good list, but I'm going to give it a shot and shovel a few driveways this morning - what with our third storm in less than a week!

Love it or hate it, for the past 12 days I've been searching all corners of Toronto for holiday exhibitionism, good or bad and posting a different photo essay documenting the annual make-over. A lot has changed in 12 days, hard to believe I couldn't find a real snowflake or snowman at the start of this series, and here we are with so much snow we don't know what to do with it.

Time to go do some last minute shopping and wrapping... Merry Christmas!

Turkeylicious by sniderscion

Whether you eat Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve (like my family) or Christmas Day, it's not Christmas dinner if there isn't any turkey on the table. With only two days to Christmas, houses will soon be filled with the loveliest smells! It's such a great time of year. The time when the finest china is be pulled from the shelves, the sleeve is put into the dinner table for all the extra guests, and only the most skilled get to carve the bird.

Only three days until Christmas! Economic struggles or not, gift giving season is upon us and the malls are packed.

The way I see it, there are two types of Christmas shoppers; those who think three days is plenty of time to do all their shopping, and those who are already done all their shopping. I'm always one of the former, so I know a thing or two about busy malls, last minute gifts and long cold walks carrying heavy bags across entire parking lots.

Thankfully, I've been able to avoid the malls on the weekend for the past month, but this time of year, that doesn't seem to matter. Last week, on a Monday, I was in the neighborhood of Yorkdale so decided to stop in and look around. After thirty minutes looking for a spot to park (and I was looking in the farthest places, I'm not a greedy parker) I decided it wasn't worth it. I couldn't find anything, anywhere. Plus, that was before the snow piles that fill about a third of the parking lots now that it's snowed.

Lesson learned. The rest of my shopping will be done via TTC! Plenty of time left!

After two weekend snow storms and more white stuff than the city knows what to do with, finding a place to put the snow can be a real challenge. Fortunately a group of people at Trinity-Bellwoods Park this weekend came up with an idea and covered almost three sides of a TTC shelter at Queen and Strachan with snow. It's kind of like an igloo, but I think it looks more like fort, regardless, the technique is most impressive.

It's not just a big pile of snow, but individually cut blocks stacked neatly. The builders even provided two windows so waiting riders could see the next streetcar approaching. I don't really care for the purple dye that's covering most of the structure, but there is a message painted into the snow on the one side (pictured below). I've got to say, bravo to whoever participated in this - a fun and safe way to use the snow.

While it's only four days until Christmas, it's only a few hours until sundown and the start of the eight day festival of Hanukkah. It's not every year that Hanukkah and Christmas are celebrated together (Hanukkah can start as early as November), but it's kind of nice when they do and today I'm featuring the Hanukkah Menorah.

I don't know as much as I should about the festival, but it was interesting to read up about it this week and learn, for example, why there are nine lights on the Hanukkah menorah, not just eight. In addition, this week I heard a great NPR piece on the Major League Dreidel Tournament, read about a Matisyahu concert in Toronto and once again heard the annual playing of The Hanukkah Song . It's funnier every time. And so, to quote from Mr. Sandler himself, "Have a happy happy happy Happy Hanukkah!"

Only 5 days till Christmas! The city is now covered in snow, school is out until the new year and relatives are on their way for the annual feast! It all happened so fast.

I grew up in one of those houses with only one string of lights. My brother wouldn't even have time to freeze his butt dragging it out and throwing it on this sad looking bush we had in the front yard, but that was our idea of decorating for the holidays. Naturally, I grew up envying all the other houses with all the fancy lights, reindeer on roofs and candy cane walkways, but I never really appreciated how much work, or energy, went into such a thing.

The house above, on Brock Avenue in Parkdale, was by far the brightest house I saw this year. Now that's something I can stare at all day. Just a marvel of a house! I think I could have fulfilled all my christmas countdown photos just on that one lawn. View more pictures of the house here.